Though it comes with a crop of upgrades, and its graphics have been brushed to a smooth shine, what it offers, despite its title, is the joy of the old.
Reaching the credits, I sat back, exhausted and disappointed at where the series had ended up.
Complex systems are made simple, by committing their clutter to muscle memory, and play-good play, at any rate-requires that you, like Selene, ride its enigmatic loop.
Taro's approach is of a restless rarity; he swaps genres as though trying to scratch an itch.
In that image lies the appeal-and for some the off-putting twinge-of Oddworld: a bleak and black-hearted concoction, laced with snickering humour and shot through with hope.
The best time I had with the game was a ten-minute stretch that contained (a) no crashes or bugs, (b) the right level and world tier-essentially, a measure of enemy toughness-and (c) a harmony of tactics, sorcery, and gunfire.
If only Naka, staying true to form, had given the whole thing a dose of high speed; his work only holds together when it hurtles past our eyes, growing vivid with velocity.
It's difficult not to be bowled over as you watch a feline chef and his staff caper through a culinary ritual of song.
The puzzles compel, while the narrative stalls, and there is something worthy in that mismatch. I only wish that breakup at its core yielded something worth holding on to.
It's worth pointing out that few other studios have the confidence to take this approach to horror: not to jolt you with sudden frights or to ration your ammunition, but to probe and puncture your emotional ease by putting foulness in such close proximity to the childish.